


Yard Up

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [42]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Buckle Up Kids We're Going To The Feels Place, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 04:30:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5953650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yard up: To pull on the rope to make upward progress, often with assistance from the belayer.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>When he next woke, Furiosa was standing a few metres away, talking with Feng and Miss Gale in a tone of voice he hadn't ever heard outside the cab of the War Rig, after she'd watched crew die.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Yard Up

Max was suddenly sitting by him. 

Ace blinked slowly. He hadn't been asleep exactly, he remembered a mirror shining bright sunlight down onto him, and loud voices, and he remembered it hurting, but it had all seemed very far away. He remembered the Boss' hand in his, her face always in his field of vision. She wasn't there now.

"Hey," Max said. "Hey, you're, you're all right." He nodded, hummed. "Furiosa's… gone to handle something. Yeah. She'll be, ah, she'll be right back."

Ace tried to lift a hand to feel at his throat, but the other man was holding his elbow, a thumb on the inside, and it stung, and Ace's mind was slowly ticking over. Max. Tube. The tattoo on the wastelander's back. Blood.

"Lost a bit of blood," the man said, and Ace knew he needed to think about this later, because his brain was not running on all cylinders right now. He felt slow and heavy and cold, and time slipped away from him.

 

The next time he tuned in, he could feel warm pressure against the top of his head. He knew it was Furiosa before he dragged open his eyes, sitting there with her thigh warm against his scalp. He could see part of Max's arm around her, and hear the crunch of green leaves being chewed.

"--don't care, just eat them all," she was saying. "Gale says they'll help you recover."

Ace tried to swallow and made a pained grunting sound. His throat hurt, and breathing wasn't feeling too easy, his throat all wrapped with bandages. He still couldn't reach to feel at it; they'd wrapped a blanket around him, both arms tucked inside.

Furiosa lightly stroked his forehead.

"Hey... " there was something in her voice he wasn't used to, something soft and tremulous and undone. "Hey." 

She didn't seem to know what else to say, and he smiled vaguely, not used to seeing her without her composure. Her eyes looked like she'd been out in a sandstorm without goggles, and she looked  _ exhausted _ . Max's broad hand curled around her shoulder, and Ace was glad for Max, glad that he was there for her when Ace couldn't be. 

He wondered why the hell the man had been willing to give him blood though. Had Furiosa asked and he just not felt able to refuse her? Would she… would she really do that on his behalf?

Ace tried to think on it some more, to figure out the right words to ask such a thing. Something short because this throat felt like there were knives inside and his face felt strange. Before he could settle on anything, sleep swallowed him again.

 

 

When he next woke, Furiosa was standing a few metres away, talking with Feng and Miss Gale in a tone of voice he hadn't ever heard outside the cab of the War Rig, after she'd watched crew die.

_ Did something happen to one of the others?  _ Ace blinked and tried to orient himself.

"I want him up in my quarters."

"Fury, if he does bleed again we need him here, immediately. Your quarters are too far away. Nara and I are going to be right here to look after him."

_ Were they talking about him? _

"If you're keeping him here I'm staying too."

Ace twitched. It would have been a larger movement but exhaustion dragged at him. For her to volunteer to stay in this place… he shifted a little, in an attempt to settle the idea into some sort of sense.

"Ace?" Max leaned into his field of vision, something a lot like concern on his face.

Ace couldn't move his right arm at all, the muscles in his shoulder screaming, but the left hand he could get out from under the blanket with some great effort. He pointed at Furiosa, looking exhausted and frayed at the edges, then at Max, then to the corridor leading away from this place.

"You want me to, hmm, take her away?" Max looked puzzled. "Woulda thought you'd—"

Ace cut his eyes side to side in a strong 'no', and Max nodded.

"She does need sleep," he conceded. "Been a stressful day."

Ace gave him a very dry look, _if she needs sleep, why is she still here?_ He thought between the two of them they'd arrived at a semi-working system of making sure Furiosa got what she needed, plus or minus some grunting.

Max gave an amused huff of breath, lightly patted his left shoulder, and got up to join Furiosa and Miss Gale.  

Ace couldn't quite follow the low-voiced conversation that followed, but it ended with Furiosa leaning into Max's side, looking like she was feeling the injuries that weren't yet completely healed (if you asked Gale) but were completely fine (if you asked Furiosa).

"If you need me again, send for me," Max said to Miss Gale.

"You really shouldn't—"

Max gave the healer an intense look, her mouth closing as she measured him, and she finally nodded.

"Fine."

Furiosa pulled away from Max before they left, coming over to look at Ace with an expression he couldn't decipher. She seemed to want to say something, but didn't, and finally she only learned in to press her forehead against his. He could feel her trembling. He blinked slowly in acknowledgement, and then flicked his gaze to Max, who nodded, and gently steered her out of there.

Ace watched until they turned the corner and then watched the corner where they disappeared until at some point he drifted off again.

  


Sometime after, while they woke him to get some thin soup into his systems, Austeyr popped his head in. “Ey, Max sent me down, we got the Boss all settled.”

Ace raised a hand in acknowledgement and turned it into a questioning wave. Apprentice just raised an eyebrow, but continued determinedly spooning soup into him. Ace tried not to grimace every time he swallowed. 

“Well she’s been like that ever since you’d gone under the knife, split her time between here and hovering over us all in her quarters.”

An eyebrow lifted without Ace’s prompting and he made a motion,  _ go on _ .

“Rachet wanted to check his hanging gardens and she wouldn’t even let him out the window, not like he hasn’t made the climb a thousand times and his arm is doin' much better. She yelled at him like he was a pup or something. Told him not to do this to her today."

Ace wasn’t sure what to make of it, though it seemed odd. He’d been finding his mind muddy with exhaustion when he drifted awake and this time was no different.

Aus awkwardly patted Ace’s shoulder, face weirdly twisted with something that looked like guilt. “Glad you pulled through, we were all worried when the Boss seemed so freaked out. Never seen her quite like that before.”

The Ace blinked. Furiosa had always seemed an immovable pillar to them, steady even when the worst was happening. He’d bet she drove into that sandstorm with a steady jaw and dry eyes. For her to be that upset seemed… Ace didn’t know how to describe it, or why his stomach felt like it was the night of a celebration, where everyone got double rations.

“Maybe ‘cause there’s fewer of us now.” Austeyr murmured and rested his hand on Ace’s shoulder, mouth quirking in a rueful smile like an echo of Ace’s. “Gotta keep us all in one place.”

Ace blew a frustrated breath through his nose. Would be an easier task on Furiosa if that silly Wastelander would just stay in that ‘one place’ instead of shifting so like he’d go right off a ledge if you forget to look at ‘em. Apprentice gave him a frustrated look in return, barely quick enough to catch the spoon back into the bowl, and shook her head, soundlessly getting up and setting the bowl aside.

_ Later _ , she waved.

Ace gave her a short nod, and then arched an eyebrow at Austeyr.

“I know right? Boss’ll run herself ragged like that, if we don’t help out.” Worry seeped into Austeyr’s voice, as the man stared sightlessly at the hallway, “Heard about what happened just after she came back, what with her re-injuring herself.”

_Well that’s what we’re here for,_ Ace tried to convey with a pointed look.

There was a long pause. Ace considered the awful time when Furiosa had been so fevered, when the women first arrived back at the Citadel. He almost couldn’t disentangle the hectic worry from that time from the revelations about Furiosa’s past, and that whole chunk of memory just felt exhausting. He almost felt distanced from his memory of himself from that time, or maybe just the part where he mentally squirmed away from the idea that he’d been so blind.

“Kompass is saying,” a hum, uncertain of welcome but determined, “He’s saying that it’s not just crew anymore, that Furiosa looks after. It’s the whole Citadel, even if it’s a new one to us. So we have to _all_ help out too, especially with her still recovering herself. Stay together.”

His shoulder was given a squeeze and Ace looked up at Austeyr, “I don't know that the Boss would keep her wheels down without you around.” A short laugh, “you know how she takes those turns, given a chance.”

Ace wheezed at that and then made a pained noise as the laughter tried to slip past his throat.

"Aa! Sorry, sorry! Tch, good thing Max decided to delay his next scouting trip when— ah, he musta decided he was needed.” Austeyr cleared his throat and looked down. 

He raised an eyebrow, not knowing that any future run had been any plan of the Tribunes given their state of guzzoline. Which probably meant it wasn’t, and that the feral brought it up. What had that man been  _ thinking _ ? Ace had known there weren't any bloodbags, he'd been told right before the surgery by Miss Gale. He'd taken the risk of bleeding out on himself.

“Repair boys say the Boss barely said a word about you bleedin', just came up all red splattered and shocky-looking to where he was workin' on a car, and he was chargin' down here."

A surprised noise escaped him, and Ace winced at the sharp pain in his throat. He'd… volunteered?  _ Why? _

Furiosa had explained, about bloodbags and how it was treating people like things, just as bad as what Joe had done to her. Ace could understand that even after that, Max might have wanted to give Furiosa his blood when she was dying— who wouldn't want to keep Furiosa alive?— But to keep Ace's old engine running?

"Anyway, they're both restin' now. Even if Max is off in his own room." Austeyr turned a worried gaze towards Ace, “You know what that’s about? ‘Cause we’re all stumped to be honest.”

Ace shook his head slowly and paused in thought. And him and Austeyr spent awhile sitting there and thinking together. It was nice, even if they were both still mystified by the Wastelander at the end of it when Apprentice wandered back to try to stuff him so full of soup that Ace pretty much passed out in self-preservation.

 

 

The next time he became aware of time, the lamps had been lit, and the mirrors they used to port in light from outside were dark. His arm was immobilised again, but he realised his mind was a lot clearer. Max was sitting next to him again, tethered to him with a line of red. 

The man grunted in hello when he realised Ace was awake, shifted a little like a buttcheek fell asleep. Or maybe the man felt awkward and wanted to disappear but it's not like he wasn’t literally tied to Ace right now, which made Ace realize that he didn’t need to waste time figuring how to say his piece.

“Didn’t realize you were so invested in us,” he murmured. 

It came out a quiet croak due to the hurt around his throat, but the other man seemed to hear it well enough, given his startled twitch at his words, and his quick, shocky glance. 

"Furiosa'd be—" Max looked uneasy, eyes skittered away, not meeting Ace’s. "Unhappy. If you—"

"She would be," Ace acknowledged. "But I bet I woulda healed just fine…” he paused a moment, speaking not coming easily and wanting to give his words the proper weight, "without a second load of your blood." He understood that this was a big deal for Max, to not only give blood but give it to a Warboy. He just wasn't quite certain why he'd received the honour.

“Slower though. Furiosa—" Max gestured vaguely as if that explained everything. 

"Enough, now," Ace said. "Take the needle out. Yer already part of the crew, if'n you want to be. Don't need to make blood debts." He suddenly wondered if the Wastelander thought to buy himself safety like this, protection. If not with Ace himself, then with Furiosa. 

Max stared at him, and Ace tried to put every bit of authority in his eyes that he could muster, laying flat on his back. Finally Max moved to take the needle out of his own arm, and then the other out of Ace. Pressed hard with his thumb on the needle wound for a few minutes, and there was something reassuring about that ache. 

"If you care so much, why are you slipping out of her room t’sleep? She'd like you to join in." 

The wastelander grunted with what might be acknowledgement, might be confusion. 

“You know she considers you crew, right?” Ace kept at the point. “So do the rest of us.”

“Mmm,” that furrow of confusion appeared on Max’s forehead again, “thought I wasn’t really… part? Of crew. Think war boys would take command from me?”

It took Ace a moment to figure out what Max meant, because, no matter Furiosa’s own blessing, it was true that no war boy would consider the wastelander stable enough to see him as Imperator for long, especially when the man himself seemed to discourage it. But when Ace thought over his question, the phrasing of it, and he thinks it was that word again, ‘crew’, that’d caused so much amusement among the Tribunes.

"No, I mean—" he wasn't sure  _ what  _ he meant, actually. "Her  _ guys _ . Aus, Kompass, Rachet, me. And you?"

Max grunted a surprised sound. 

“ Would you be so quick to offer blood to any others, the rest of th’war boys? Miss Giddy? The vuvalini women?” Ace pressed.

The man reared back. “Mmm, maybe, if they really…  needed it. If they were dying…” His eyes said,  _ I would have to think about it, but if they were dying...  _

“I’m talkin’ about this time. This _second_ time, for no good reason but to get my ass off this ledge faster.” _And back into Furiosa’s room_ , they both heard, unspoken. 

Max took a good long look at the tube in his hands.

But he didn’t move much more than his eyes, and that same awkward shifting as he sat.

"Furiosa was, um. Upset. That you'd have to spend the night here."

“ ‘S not like the Organic Mechanic is here. ‘S not like that Feng wants to get on either her or Miss Giddy’s bad side, eh?” Ace peered at Max some more. “Was she actually _that_ upset?” Not that the idea didn’t send a warm glow through him, but it didn’t seem to make sense. 

Max couldn’t seem to meet his eyes. _Not just Furiosa then, mayhap._

"Maybe you should stick around the room for the night, huh? Talk to her for a bit?” Ace cough a little around the healing ache of his throat, “Get the feeling she'll need that. And let them get you warmed up, huh?" Ace knew Max was perhaps closer or more easy with the others. Maybe they could pull something from him, words or some sense of what was wrong, or at least help some. The man was looking grey around the edges, and punched about the eyes with poor sleep.

"I, uh." Max looked at Ace as if startled at his question. As if the man not only never had crew to warm him up but never even had a proper pup pile to know what was missing, or know what to do with one; and wouldn’t that explain some of his lurking on that ledge, maybe?

Ace didn't look away, because there was a tired slant to the man's shoulders that suggested that whatever was on his half-feral mind was about to come out. 

"Dunno that I can—" the man's throat clicked as he swallowed heavily. "I have these— dreams."

Ace stopped himself from dismissing that because they all had dreams and Max knew that, was in the room where some of their dreams shook them awake. Whatever these dreams were they were clearly enough to chase Max from their room and bad enough that Max didn’t think them comparable.

"Oh? Dreams?" He tried to keep his tone neutral, but welcoming.

"'bout touching her, and it all goes—" he gestured vaguely, "wrong."

"Wrong how?"

"It starts good, but then, uh... I suddenly... realise that I'm—" his voice dropped low and small, ashamed. "hurting her." 

Ace had to pause for a moment of  _ hell the fuck no _ , anger and alarm and denial, but then realized the man looked as horrified as Ace felt.

"None of us would let you hurt her," Ace finally said, firmly, hoping it sounded as reassuring as he meant it. "Not ever."

“I don't _want_ to. Ever. I'd rather— But things go… wrong. Around me,” words almost growled, “People die. If it’s not one thing it’s another.”

“Bollocks, people die anyways. You calling yourself the Wasteland now?” Ace snorted, or tried to. It came out sorta like a sniff, “That’s why you have to have a team. ‘S why you're telling me, innit?" 

Max’s head sprung up, to meet his eyes finally.

"So as I can make sure it won't go wrong."

Max hummed uncertainly. 

“We’re talkin’ about it, right? So I can look out for it? Won’t go wrong if we do.” Ace’s throat felt like it’d been scrubbed with gravel but he pushed gamely on, “Worst comes to worse, we’ll dogpile your feral ass until we've got her away from you and take ya down to the Pits. Go a round or two. Clear it up.”

“Isn’t that…”

“A good spar to get it out of your system?”

Max just made a confused noise, but his eyes were thoughtful. “Mm.” Max cleared his throat as if trying to find words.

When after a long moment the other man still didn’t say anything, Ace just said mildly, “Most crew, dunno how it is with you, seem to have better sleep in a pile, less dreams.”

Max nodded in agreement, but grimaced, “The dreams…”

“Are having you avoid something that’ll help you, is that it?” Ace said pointedly.

“Not that simple,” Max growled.

“ ‘s not,” Ace agreed, and at Max’s surprised glance he continued, “Think it was easy when we first started? The thought of showing each other our nightfevers? How weak they made us?”

“Then. Then how…”

“Furiosa.” Ace said simply, tired and only getting more so, and not sure how to explain the slow falling together, the peach liquor and the getting injured and how it was so much easier to be dragged to her room injured and made to stay.

Max dropped his head.

“Just think on it. Go sleep. She’d need...” Ace mumbled and reached out blindly to try to pat his leg reassuring-like. Max’s hand landed on his as if to remove it, but then seemed to change his mind. 

Ace wasn't sure if he succeeded, because sleep reclaimed him. 

His hand was warm.

* * *

 

"You should drink this," Furiosa gestured at the bottle of mothers' milk in the faint light of the single lamp. She'd shrugged off her blankets, sitting up when he came in, still turning the other man’s words over in his head. 

Max grunted. "Yours."

"I don't want it." she let herself slump with exhaustion. "Drink it?" Her voice sounded small.

"Are you.. hmm.. are you worried about me?"

She gave him a betrayed look, as if asking that question went against some agreement she'd thought they'd had. He opened his arm, offering her an embrace. 

"Can't do anything for Ace. Then I… then you—" her shoulders hunched up small. "—what if I'd lost you instead of him? How can I ask that trade, it’s different now, I don’t have to..." 

_...to be like I’ve had to be under Joe _ , he heard. Max remembered the first glance he’d ever had of her, stiff-shouldered and glaring like the only way to stand her ground was to push everything softer away. He remembered that he'd never even heard Furiosa say the Tribunes’ actual names until Max came back to the Citadel with Austeyr. He’d wondered now and again how much of herself she would have had to suppress just to survive as she’d had, all the care and the worry for her people she’d barely been able to show before, and guessed it was all coming out now like a lanced sore.

There was barely any breath behind her next words, she suddenly had her forehead pressed against his. "Or— or both of you? What if it had been...”

"Mmm," he hummed, wrapping his arm around her. He'd brought her to her quarters in the early evening, because she'd been exhausted from the tension, not to mention running through half the Citadel when Ace started losing too much blood, desperately looking for a donor and overtaxing her still-healing body. From what Kompass said she'd slept very little, and it had been all they could do to stop her from going back down and spending the night on the ledge. 

So he'd gone back down to sit with Ace. Planned on maybe finding a corner to doze in afterwards but the war boy just told him to go back to Furiosa, that she needed him, and it did seem like the other man’s intuition was right. 

It seemed like she needed him to be here right now. And after giving Ace his blood, the idea of getting up now, when he felt so tired and cold, was unthinkable. He still struggled to understand why he'd done it, given a warboy blood after he'd sworn never again. 

“ What if I lost both?" she murmured again. "Lost even more of my crew, all because I was selfish, because I asked him to get lumps removed?"

"But you haven't. Lost us. We're both, ah, both still here." He hadn't even known how relieved he felt about that until he said the words. 

She sighed against his shoulder as if that truth finally,  _ finally  _ settled within her. 

Max told himself he’d try to stay a couple more days. See how… see how it went.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to weigh in about what you think would be the traditional dance of the Vuvalini, [you can!](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/138883901729/bonehandledknife-what-is-the-traditional-dance)


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